In the field of digital communications, data bits are grouped to form digital symbols. Each symbol is then represented by a corresponding pulse shape, and a sequence of such pulses is used to modulate a carrier according to a chosen modulation format. One such digital communications system is the current high definition television (HDTV) broadcast standard adopted in the United States by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and described in the “ATSC Digital Television Standard”, Document A/53 published on Sep. 16, 1995. In the ATSC-HDTV standard, each symbol represents 3 or 4 data bits, resulting in signal constellations of 8 or 16 symbols, respectively. In addition, each symbol is represented by a pulse with a square-root raised cosine shape and 11.5% roll-off. The adopted modulation format is suppressed carrier vestigial sideband modulation with 8 or 16 levels of amplitude (8-VSB or 16-VSB), that is, 8 or 16 possible symbols, respectively. In addition, a small in-phase pilot at the suppressed carrier frequency is added to the signal, being 11.3 dB below the average signal power.
An important property associated with the choice of the symbol representative pulse shape is to minimize intersymbol interference (ISI). ISI happens when the pulse representing one symbol interferes with the pulses representing temporally surrounding symbols, impairing the recovery of the transmitted symbol sequence. In particular, pulses described as Nyquist pulses have zero crossings at non-zero multiples of the symbol period, TS, not interfering with adjacent symbols and being therefore ISI free. One Nyquist pulse of practical interest is the raised cosine pulse due to its smooth spectrum and easy filter implementation. The most popular pulse shape used in practical communications systems is the square-root raised cosine pulse, which is formed by taking the square root of the spectrum of a raised cosine pulse. This pulse shaping filter is used in both the transmitter and the receiver in order to split the spectral characteristics of the raised cosine pulse equally between the transmitter and the receiver. By cascading two square-root raised cosine filters together (one filter in the transmitter and the other in the receiver), the square-root raised cosine pulse spectrum is squared, thus creating a net system response of the desired raised cosine pulse, which is ISI free. In addition, because these filters are even around the center coefficient (tap), cascading both filters is equivalent to performing a matched filtering operation, which maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the output of the receiver matched filter, that is, the receiver square-root raised cosine filter.
The ATSC HDTV standard suggests an arrangement for an HDTV receiver. In the suggested arrangement, the IF stage generates a near-baseband VSB signal with a pulse shape exhibiting the square-root raised cosine filter characteristic described above. A demodulator follows the IF stage and includes the following main functions: an analog to digital converter (ADC) which samples the near-baseband signal; a carrier tracking loop (CTL) which downconverts the sampled signal to baseband and corrects for any frequency offsets between the transmitter carrier and the receiver tuner local oscillator (LO); a symbol tracking loop (STL) which detects the symbol timing and provides sample rate conversion to the symbol rate; a synchronization detector which detects frames and segments within the received signal; and an equalizer which compensates for linear distortion introduced into the received signal by the communications channel or additional filtering.
It is desirable to implement the matched pulse shaping filter somewhere in the demodulator. Several locations have been proposed. Each location has advantages and disadvantages. First, the matched filter may be implemented as an analog filter and located before the ADC, or as a digital filter after the ADC However, if the filter is placed in either of these two locations, its input signal is subject to a carrier frequency offset between the transmitter carrier and the receiver tuner LO prior to correction by the CTL. Particularly, in the ATSC-HDTV standard, because the roll-off factor is so small (11.5%), the pulse excess bandwidth on each side of the spectrum (˜310 KHz) is in the order of magnitude of a possible frequency offset (50 to 100 KHz). Therefore, such an offset can introduce unrecoverable distortion into the received signal, unless carrier offset information is fed back to the tuner for prior correction.
Second, the matched filter may be implemented as a baseband digital filter and located after the CTL. However, the CTL operation of down-conversion of the square-root raised cosine input signal to baseband introduces linear distortion in the signal, such that another square-root raised cosine filter is no longer the ideal matched filter. Third, the matched filter may be located after the STL. If placed in this location, the performance of the STL may be adversely affected by the ISI in the signal, and this is even more pronounced if the STL is decision directed. Fourth, the matched filter may be bypassed and its function performed by the equalizer. Ideally, the equalizer should use its taps to compensate for multipath and other unpredictable linear distortions. Using the equalizer to also implement the matched filter puts an additional burden on the equalizer. This burden may render the equalizer unable to compensate for multipath and other linear distortions for which it otherwise could compensate.
It is desirable to place the matched pulse shaping filter in the most advantageous location in the demodulator, and to modify its filter characteristics in order to provide optimum performance. In the following, it is assumed that the equalizer corrects for (unknown) linear distortions introduced by the communications channel (e.g., multipath propagation) and the function of the matched pulse shaping filter is to correct for (known) linear distortions associated with the pulse shape.